Well, Dom has been touting it as the best arranger ever, for years now... Not the best arranger for the 2% of arranger users.

Ketron is already showing that, if it sounds good enough, there IS a market for a $5000 arranger. People pay WAY more than that for Wersi's too... and they don't have T3 beating styles, IMO, either!

And I'm sorry, but people are paying $3500+ for a T3 that they will use 10% of it's features at best... because it sounds GREAT! Same with PA2, same (back in the day) for my G70. That cost me $3500+ when it first came out.

I would HAPPILY pay $5000 for an arranger that was as open ended and versatile as the MS, IF it had styles and sounds as well balanced and as useful as my G70's are, or T3, etc.. But I can't see paying what Dom wants for the MS (it IS a reasonable price for what it does) now, when it DOESN'T do the basics that the G70 has. And, in all fairness to Yamaha and Korg, the G70's styles are not as good as many of theirs.

You see, I need BOTH open ended versatility, AND closed arranger convenience. I will do a custom sequence for tunes that no current style gets close (not much point in a style if it's that unique). But when a ROM style DOES get close, there's a day or so of work I don't have to do! Multiply that by hundreds of tunes, and you can see what a time saver hundreds of excellent styles are for the gigging musician and working pro.

I've always felt that the whole idea of 'open ended' was so that you could do what no regular arranger could do when needed. But to lose what the regular arranger CAN do well, just to have the option is not a good use of my time.

I just don't see it as an 'either or' scenario. I need BOTH, or what I have is already the better choice. If designing your own styles is the hallmark of an 'open' arranger user, then I've already GOT an 'open' arranger! If I had the time and the talent, I could make styles for my G70 as well, but unlike some here, I don't really claim I do... OTOH, none of them actually SHOW us their styles, so how can we judge how low or high the bar is?

If Dom is afraid the price bump will put off his WS customers, perhaps he could find a way to copy protect the styles so that ONLY the purchaser can use them (no trading around!) and SELL a T3 quality original (no half-assed translations... every one unique and useful, you know, like all the users are CLAIMING they do ) style package as an add-on. If they truly blew the T3 ones away, as I said, Ketron are showing that quality WILL get you orders... even at $5000 or so.